The Life of a Raiding Feral Druid

I feel the need to vent further.

So I just read another post on Current raid content difficulty from AL over on his blog “Of Claws and Paws”.

It reminds me of BC and how I came into the game World of Warcraft late and how it was impossible for me to catch up to the rest of my raiding peers.

In BC I come out of level 70 ready to go but I have to run all these instances even though crafted or arena gear is better for me at every slot than what I can get out of them. I have to do them just to be allowed to set foot in Kara. Ok, no problem. But wait, my whole guild has to find the time to get this done… Ok, we can wait a little longer to get into Kara.

So we finally get everyone into Kara, great instance, I remember spending a whole night or 2 working on Moroes, the 2nd boss of the instance. That was fun, I also enjoy a good challenge… but as a guild we are way behind the curve of other guilds that had been 70 long before we were. It’s not necessarily that they power leveled faster just that they had already been WOW players when BC released and only had to go from 60-70… not from 0-70.

So we are behind the curve and we get through Kara. Now we have… how many more raids to do before BT? Let me count them for you.

Gruul

Mags

SSC

TK

Hyjal

Mind you we still need to run Kara for gear people still need.

So we raid 3 nights per week 3-4 hours per night. How the hell are we supposed to clear all those? I even left out the 2 BC world bosses (which we worked on and killed).

So to now hear people complain about the direction Blizzard has taken infuriates me.

I consider myself a good player. I play with other good players in a good guild. I research my class as well as others to improve my game and I help people when I can to improve theirs as well.

But someone explain to me where and I quote AL (no ill will toward you buddy, just trying to make a point)

Now we are left with everyone getting cheapened first place trophies.

What? No, I get it, just another way of saying anyone can clear Ulduar content except I don’t believe that is true. I don’t have the numbers but I would bet the number players that have cleared Ulduar is a very small %. To me those first place trophies are not cheap at all. Hell, where is mine?

Tell you what, consider that clearing Ulduar 25 in normal mode is a 3rd place trophy. Ulduar 25 Hard is 2nd place, and downing Algalon is 1st place.

I think we all know how many 1st place trophies are really out there… not many.

Sure some bosses in Ulduar have gotten pretty easy, but that happens when every week you do the same 6-7 bosses without fail. FL is a joke, agreed but I could care less because he is 1 boss on the way to many others. I don’t think a whole instance has to be tough. I don’t remember people complaining about how easy loot reaver was. The first boss in Hyjal was a joke as well. This is nothing new.

What is new is Blizzard attempting to make sure that at the bare minimum that their normal difficulty content can be cleared and farmed by at least decent raiders with some time to play. If not you end up with a lot of players behind the curve yet again.

I honestly believe that the next Raid will be out before we clear Ulduar or at least before we have time to farm it.

What is nice is that gear requirements from 1 raid to the next has been relaxed. We also have 10 man versions to help bridge the gear gap as well. I would hate though to jump to the next raid instance before completing Ulduar but I know that is what happened in BT as I was working in there before downing Kael in TK.

Sure Blizzard could have left in the attunements but then you have even less people getting caught up or doing content beneath their level for no reason.

So I guess bottom line is I just don’t get the disappointment coming from raiders that feel there is no challenge left in the game yet they have not completed hard mode encounters or Algalon. How is there no challenge left in the game if your guild has not completed all the possible raid content?

Seriously, the proof is in the pudding, clear all the current content then get back to me. (again, not directed at you Al :))

19 Responses to I feel the need to vent further.

There is no challenge. You can PuG up to Yogg-Saron. Also comparing TBC to Wrath is a bit of an issue. For the early part of TBC you had attunements to all raiding encounters(Kara, SSC, TK, Hyjal and BT). Wrath there is only one attunement and that’s the key for Malygos. So content is accessible to all. And “catching people up”?? There are still upgrades for some in OS3D, Malygos 25, and Naxx 25 man. The problem is people want to walk into content in quest greens and blues(it’s sad I could do it on my DK) and down bosses. You may as well give someone a piece of loot for just walking into Ulduar with the way Flame Levithan can be done.
Get back to me when you can prove that Ulduar up to Yogg-Saron(arguably the only challenging boss in Ulduar..Algalon = timed fight) can’t be pugged. 😉

Oh and they filled the gear TBC gap by adding BoJ gear and removing attunements. Some of that gear was as good as T6. The idea of jumping from Kara to Sunwell is absurd to me, but Blizzard has basically allow this in Wrath(Naxx to Ulduar in a day no problem). This game has been about time. The more time you play the more you get to see and do. Look at Alchemy and Inscription for example. To learn a new potion, flask, etc you must do Northrend Alchemy Research which has a three day cooldown. Same for Inscription and learning new glyphs. Making Titansteel bars for crafted epic gear takes time as well. Again this game revolves around time. There is no pause or save button. If you come in late that means you have to put in extra time to get up to level. I came in late during TBC as my current guild was finishing Tier 4 content. What did I do? I took the time to obtain any gear I could outside of Kara, Gruuls, etc to get myself ready. I didn’t expect to be hand held the whole way through a Kara run.

Sorry just sounds like everyone feels a sense of entitlement to all content because they pay money.

Yes, you can’t compare Wrath and BC but you can’t compare going from Naxx to Ulduar to going from Kara to BT either and that was not what I was doing. Naxx to Ulduar has been explained by Blizzard as going from Kara to SSC. Wrath will eventually have more raid instances and the last one produced will be going from Naxx to it. Ulduar is BC’s SSC and if I remember correctly getting through SSC was not a huge deal til you got to VashJ so Ulduar I guess is just about right.

I can’t prove that all the bosses to Yogg can or can’t be pugged but I seriously doubt it. Anyone can walk into Ulduar in greens and blues if they are with talented geared players but you are smoking crack if you are suggesting a group of 25 players in all quest gear are going to get much further than FL. You would have to show me a WWS of that one.

Bottom line, the last boss of an instance is the toughest one, from what I can tell nothing really has changed.

IMHO, Ulduar so far has been tougher than SSC with just less trash.

I would need further explanation on the “sense of entitlement”. I personally feel the game is tuned fine at the moment and my problem is with those screaming it is too easy but have yet to defeat the last boss of the instance Algalon. That is like people complaining SSC is a cakewalk but they have yet to beat Vash.

I am just saying, people complaining should finish Uldaur (killing Algalon) then scream about the changes being made to the instance.

The sense of entitlement is people should be able to walk into any part of the content because they pay $15 a month. That to me is absurd. As I’ve heard throughout my WoW career the game begins at the level cap. Too many expect to hit level cap and immediately be able to enter any raid now(esp with how Naxx turned out).

After doing SSC and most of Ulduar sans Algalon(yes Yogg to 3%) I wouldn’t equate the two to be the same on difficulty at their respective end game levels. The trash up to Auriaya is harder than Flame Levithan or XT or Kologarn from what I’ve seen. Hydross actually took dps thinking, four good tanks, and competent healers. Compare that to Flame Levithan where half your raid can basically do nothing and he’ll die. I’d bet that you can do some server searching and find quite a few that PuG up to Yogg. We had a 25 man PuG on my server weekly until the 10 man guild that led it quit raiding. They were on Thorim and had the rest of the content on farm with rotating people weekly. SSC wasn’t PuGable on my server until Sunwell came out and even then the PuG I ran with could only down Lurker and Leo.
The content is too easy because it’s made for all. It’s not made to be a challenge for all, but to be open to all. Sounds great, but having no challenge is boring. We shouldn’t be hitting big red buttons behind bosses to activate “hard modes”. The boss itself should be hard mode. Just my thoughts as we all have our own. 😉

I’d like to see proof of a 25 man pugging up to YS as that seems highly unlikely (in current iteration of Ulduar).

Also, for someone who has yet to kill YS or do any hard modes, I don’t think you have a accurate view of the whole instance to make that sort of judgment or statement. My view is real progression raiding doesn’t begin until you start doing hard modes and work towards Algalon. While I may have cleared YS (10 and 25) we’ve done minimal work on 25 hard modes which are significantly more challenging.

As Jacemora has stated, very few guilds have killed Algalon 10 and even fewer guilds have done Algalon 25. If you want to comment about a whole instance being a joke I think you need to have at least cleared the whole instance including hard modes & Algalon.

Vallen,
One boss fight does not make an instance. I think you are trying to judge Ulduar by two boss fights, Algalon and Yogg-Saron. Algalon is a time race. You have one hour to down him. Yogg-Saron is the only current fight besides maybe Mimiron that with added hard modes is going to even be a major challenge. If you want to comment about the whole instance don’t leave out the other bosses. 😉

I am in a ten man guild. We never even had the chance to do SSC. We have 10 dedicated raiders. Ew have cleared Naxx and are now 5 bosses into Ulduar. We get to raid 6 hours a week. 2 on wednesday and 4 or so on friday. For us this is great. We get to do the new content. It’s challenging and it lasts.

Well, the harcore screams continue to sound like a very partial view to me. I’m gonna tone it down a bit though

– re pugs: people on my server pug ulduar10. But, its not really a pug. Its a great group of rotating friends who dont happen to be in the same guild, and dont make it for their guilds 10man offnight runs. There are high requirements to get into these runs, and they’re led by knowledgeable raid leaders. They dont LFG for empty spots. They wouldnt waste each others time that way. There’s no way Ulduar25 is puggable the same way naxx25 was. And if you’re in a 25man guild truly pugging 10man Ulduar, I’d say you’re already overgeared, and already have a lot of practice with the encounters.

– If someone bought wow today for the first time, Ulduar is definitely not open to them by next month. Many veteran players forget how much they’ve learned over the years, and take for granted their ability to waltz through the less challenging parts of a new instance.

– dont forget there’ve been 2 major gear resets already. All your raiding efforts vanish overnight with a new level cap. Sunwell is supposed to be a lot harder than Ulduar. It wasnt a difficulty progression of BT -> SWP -> Naxx -> Ulduar. Now, I can understand some players seem to want that, but its never been their design to do that.

– Saying you’ve cleared Ulduar bar Algalon: How about saying you’re 1/9 hardmode, 2/9 hardmode and so on. If a ton of people were at 8/9 right now (in 25 man – 10man is cheating) then I might say the content is too easy. But they’re not.

– re entitlement: wow, well I could argue that because people pay $15 a month, they feel entitled to content that’s exclusively designed and engineered for a tiny number of people out of the vast majority (who also pay $15/month). They want entire instances, with some of most beautiful, expensive content in the game – created especially for them. They think they are “entitled” to such content, because they’re such awesome players (and not because they’ve agreed to pay blizzards hundreds of dollars/month for the privilige). I saw one hardcore whiner go so far as to say that all these other players “dont deserve to play wow” if they find the content hard. I suppose if he was in charge, he’d ban 10.9 million accounts overnight. Wow fascism at its best. Its people like that that give hardcore a bad name, just fyi.

However, I’m not going to argue that point. Just putting it out there as a crazy thought that hit me at random just now.

Al, I understand what you are saying but why do you feel people should not get the reward of raiding once they hit the level cap?

Just because it was once that way?

You shouldn’t let the ability of others to see end game content rain on your parade.

I understand that the feeling of accomplishment has been diminished as those of us that were able to raid anything endgame was a big deal whereas now it is easy to pick up 9 others and do some 10 man Naxx. It is a bummer that when we downed most of Ulduar bosses for the first time… heck Naxx as well, no one cared about screenshots which was new.

So I get your sentiment, I just don’t think you should confuse the availability of people to see endgame content and it’s difficulty. They are mutually exclusive. Sure people saw Sarth but how many did 3 drakes up?

The game has changed. Endgame accomplishments are tracked now beyond something as simple as a boss kill. You either like it or you don’t, but it doesn’t make the game easy or any less challenging. Heck, for the truly addicted player you can even go for clearing 25 man instances without a death. You know how many guilds have cleared Ulduar 25 without a death. ZERO.

I remember when seeing endgame content was about how many quarters you had… time wasn’t an issue which was nice… and having a crowd watching behind you was cool too.

I used to like dominating people when Killer Instinct came out in the arcades… that was always fun. I think my favorite games were the laserdisc Space Ace and Dragons Lair games. Those were always fun when they were working.

I think WOW is cheaper than my arcade habit was… wish I still had the same amount of free time though.

So level cap means you should automatically get a free ticket into any dungeon? Sounds more like you just want the cheat codes like on old Nintendo. I can send you a copy of an Old Nintendo Power if you like. =p I’m sorry, but hitting the level cap shouldn’t mean you’re ready for content. Blizzard gave us heroics and professions to gear us for raids. And back to the entitlement. If you want to see the content then you go do it. Don’t expect to be handed it on a silver platter just because you pay $15 a month. Taking that point of view I feel I am entitled to a well though out and challenging dungeon. Currently we don’t have a fully challenging dungeon. We have a mostly cakewalk dungeon that ends with a couple difficult bosses.
And yes someone who just bought WoW will not see Ulduar in the next month. Mostly for obvious reasons such as leveling and gearing. We don’t know when the next dungeon will come out so as of right now we still have plenty of time. You could probably roll a new toon, level it to 80, and get part way through Ulduar before the next dungeon. That would be if you’ve played WoW before though.
Jace, I’d say around 75% of the people that wanted to see 0S3D were able to see. My guild still stops on Sunday’s and we do 3 drakes. It hasn’t gone any where and won’t unless something happens to Blizz’s servers. lol
I agree the game has changed. I disagree on what you afterward though. The game has become much easier and lost a lot of its challenge. It has become all about an achievement system. That’s a topic for another time.

Professions for gear has nothing to do with having to clear something before raiding.

I can only speak for my druid and DK toons but there were no key pieces of Heroic gear I needed before going into Naxx. This is no different than BC when there was no gear I really need for Heroics to get into Kara.

I guess I should ask, what do you think the cooldown period should be between someone hitting the level cap and getting to actually start playing the game by raiding which many people refer to as “when the game really starts”.

I think you are off on when the content will be out, it will be sooner than later.

Where do you get 75% of the people that wanted to see S3D got to beat it? I know a lot of guilds that were on 2 drakes and started working on 3 when Ulduar came out.

So is your guild doing S3D instead of working on Ulduar hard modes? Why? With only so much time to raid what is the point in that?

How can you call a dungeon not fully challenging if you have not done all the challenges it presents?

Well I don’t know if you tanked on your druid, but the 2nd BiS tanking ring pre-Ulduar came from a heroic. Some classes have gear from heroics that is very helpful because most quest gear is poorly itemized overall. You most likely won’t be hit cap, etc from your quest gear. I pushed near 2k on my DK in KT attempt, but that being said DK dps is a bit OP. Even more so than feral dps imo.
The average player needs better gear or normally isn’t pulling their own weight. I will admit I’ve met a handful of exceptions, but most don’t know how to play their class much less understand the fights. I’ve done enough pugs to figure that out. Flame Levithan doesn’t take most of the quest gear as HP on your machine so in say a chopper you’re sitting at 50kish HP. You’re dead pretty soon after the fight starts. The problem is the average player doesn’t get to run many dungeons leveling and many alts just power level right past them. This means when they get to 80 they have to learn it from scratch. I’d rather teach someone in dungeons than spend time in Naxx frustrating 9/24 other people.

About 0S3D I never said beat it. I said see it. I know quite a few guilds that attempted it and didn’t down it, but did 2D instead. OS3D isn’t that hard of a fight. It takes three things. Good healers, awareness by the whole raid, and high dps. My guild doesn’t do OS3D instead of hard modes. Don’t jump to conclusions. We pick the hard modes for the week we will work on. Sunday is our last raid night and it lasts from 4pm until 10pm with a nice long break in the middle. Before heading to do Yogg(normally on him by then) we do OS3D for drakes and free enchanting mats. It also breaks up the same old rut that a raid can get into after a week in the same instance.

How can you speak of dungeon being challenging when you have to push buttons and do other things to get to hard modes? It’s a joke. They should be part of the normal fight not some set apart special mode. And how can I not make a call on a dungeon being challenging when I’ve been through over 80% of it? I never denied Yogg to be a bit of a challenge. I’ve attempted most of the hard modes and they are all as a friend said:
“Every encounter is either “this boss does more damage and had more health” or “this boss gains one more ability” or (the absolute worst) “you have to kill this boss in a really short amount of time, so just stack DPS out the ass.”
None of these fights on hard mode are new fights. It’s the same fight with stuff added. I truly wish Blizzard would’ve just made these “hard modes” part of the normal fight. Or would have that been too much of a challenge? Personally I don’t think so. If you enjoy a challenge you would welcome the hard modes as part of the fight. Most of the hard modes are even doable in mostly T7. Maybe not so for bad players, but bad players will be bad no matter how much gear you give them. And as I’ve said I don’t equate casual player to bad player.

I didn’t make judgement on the instance, as I did not say whether Ulduar is too easy or too hard. I have yet to complete hard modes in 10 or 25 man and until I do so I don’t think I can judge the challenge of the instance. My point was just because you have almost completed the easy mode version of the instance, that is only 50% of Ulduar.

It’s very easy to say that “so and so hard mode is so easy” especially when you’ve never tried/completed it. If it was all so very simple and easy, the question is, why haven’t you completed it? Why not do it in it’s original form before they nerfed it to all to accommodate more players accessing the content? I must say it really annoys me when people continually complain about content being so easy and not fun when to this point majority of guilds are nowhere close to completing the instance. Bottom line is, you’re 49% of the way through Ulduar, when you’re 100% complete then you can make judgement.

On a complete side note, Blizzard is changing easy/hard modes so now instead of people complaining that content is too easy, they’ll complain it’s not accessible for casuals and how it’s not fair.

I’ll make a judgment call when I feel it is okay to do so. I feel the time is now. This game has never had “hard modes” until now. We have never judged a raid by the hard modes. 100% of Ulduar is seeing all the bosses not the hard modes to me. I’m one boss short of that. I have also tried every hard mode, but one or two(General/Yogg). I’ll make a judgment if I want to. No one can stop anyone from calling out the difficulty of a dungeon. You can disagree, but either way for both of us it’s an opinion. And it’s my opinion this dungeon is easy. Too easy.

All content is accessible to casuals. It’s a person’s choice how much time they put into playing WoW. If you don’t put the time in you won’t see the end bosses. WoW has always and will always be a game based around time. If you can only play five hours a week then chances are you most likely won’t see much end game raiding content. We’ve already got people asking for soloable raid instances. I find that absurd. Last I check I’m playing an online game with millions of other people. The content takes working together to down. If I wanted a solo game there are hundreds of others out there. I mean why is someone playing a game with other people if they want to avoid working with the other people? Defeats much of the point of playing an online game.

To interject another opinion here, and it’s something I’m most likely going to expand upon in a future blog post of mine, I don’t believe raiding has gotten inherently easier by design, but players are much better and are more prepared for the content which is more -accessible-.

1. Strategy sites, video guides and blogs are growing almost exponentially with each patch. Players can have a solid strategy for every boss in Ulduar before ever stepping foot inside. Players are expected to do this. Smart players will have done this.

2. We’ve had 8 tiers of raiding to get experience. Dungeons today incorporate almost all the elements you will see in boss fights. We ARE prepared.

Combine experience with knowledge and ressources and you get good results. While I don’t disagree that Ulduar is not on par with the difficulty of previous tiers of raids (ignoring the joke that is tier 7), this is not purely a design flaw.

Finally, accessibility != difficulty. Just because we HAD to farm for months to get the right sets of gear on enough people, or to get attuned, doesn’t mean it made an encounter difficult. It meant it catered to those who had a lot of time to raid, and I hope we’ve moved on from the thinking that being online 24/7 makes us hardcore raiders.

(for the record, I’m against all the nerfs going on in Ulduar, and in theory I’m for making things harder… but I just can’t justify that reasoning once I get down to truly thinking about it, at least not in a way that isn’t me being bitter or from some sense of entitlement)

Al, you still seem to be leaving out Algalon as a boss of Ulduar and yes unfortunately to see him you have to complete a quest that involves doing hard modes but it does account for seeing 100% of Ulduar.

Also Al, I don’t think people have an issue with the way people feel about the current state of raiding just surprised that people that are not finishing the instance are the ones complaining/bashing the design and challenge.

Saying that hard modes are bogus from a challenge standpoint makes no sense to me. You make the fights tougher, the rewards are greater, and ultimately if you are successful you get to see an encounter only elite players will experience. Just because the core mechanics don’t change doesn’t make it any less of a challenge, especially in fights where new abilities are gained in the hard mode.

Lastly, thanks for coming to the site Al and posting your thoughts. It’s nice to see everyone can comment here and keep a good civil debate going.

@Al – I will agree that it’s your own opinion and nothing I say will change yours (or mine). But that is why we post here which is really just to discuss different points of view.

@Latus – Definitely agree with Latus on the point that was made in regards to better preparation. In vanilla wow raiding there was no PTR testing, no videos to watch strategies/mechanics and being as wow was a fresh game, every mechanic was brand new and not a rehashed revision that is reused in future fights (which may make things seem easy)

Lets consider this scenario. Instead of having 14 easy mode and 14 hard mode encounters, what if Ulduar was designed to be 7 easy mode and 7 hard mode, where the front half was doable by majority of guilds and then the backhalf was really only doable by progressive hardcore raiding guilds. That would turn Ulduar back to a pre WOTLK instance. Would that be in effect better?

I already have the quest for summoning Algalon. 😉 It dropped off IC last week. I believe more people have an issue than some would like to admit. The first boss is a joke and farmed by pugs weekly including on hard modes. Wish the guild that was running Ulduar 25 pug on my server hadn’t quit. =(

The hard modes are bogus because they should be the normal fights. More than elite players will see the hard modes because outside of may Algalon, Mimiron hard mode, and Yogg-Saron hard mode most of the hard modes aren’t that hard. Most of the hard modes are just adding more health, increasing the power of the boss, or having to kill a boss faster. Not much to hard mode imo. Maybe if the fight changed completely it would be harder, but so far Blizzard didn’t add anything truly new, exciting, and challenging with hard modes. There will always be people carried through content though so expect to see more than just the “elites” with hard mode achievements. Plus I’ll bet there will be quite a few casuals with some of the hard mode achievements(esp FL achieves).

I’m just of the point of view of why make hard modes? Why didn’t Blizzard add them as part of the normal fights? As most would say it was to please the hardcore minority. I’d argue these modes haven’t appeased the majority of hardcore raiders. For a fact I’ve seen some hardcore and casual quit citing these hard modes as the downfall of WoW raiding. I think Blizzard didn’t want to hear all the crying over the bosses being too hard. None of these hard modes are equal to C’thun pre-nerf so to me it wouldn’t have been too hard.

Val,
That idea would mean a lot of crying from bad players. Plus all content is doable by anyone who takes the time. Like I said this game is about the time you put into it.